"Freddy Vs. Jason" is the ultimate high-concept millennial junk, but that's what's good about it. This long-awaited showdown between two '80s slasher-movie icons -- Jason Voorhees, of the "Friday the 13th" series, and Freddy Krueger, of the "Nightmare on Elm Street" saga (it never occurred to me before, but the killers both have Eurotrash names) -- is just about perfect for what it is.

If you grew up loving the guilty-pleasure horror movies of the '80s, Freddy Vs. Jason will feel like home to you. I have a massive soft spot for such movies, and to fans like me, this is like Ali vs. Foreman.

In Freddy's old stomping grounds, the township has banded together to make sure everyone forgets his reign of dream-terror; fear gives him power, and years of neglect have weakened him. Freddy hits upon the idea of bringing Jason back from the dead so he can control the hulking hockey-masked psycho and send him to Elm Street. Once Jason gets there, he warms up by dropping in on a post-coital idiot and literally folding him in half. The survivors of Jason's first attack -- including Monica Keena, Kelly Rowland of Destiny's Child, and Katharine Isabelle (of the excellent Canadian werewolf film Ginger Snaps) -- figure out pretty quickly that they're in a Freddy Vs. Jason movie, especially when Freddy begins gaining strength and dominating their dreams.

As a horror fan, I have misgivings about Kane Hodder (who wore the hockey mask in the last few Friday the 13th films, including Jason X) being bumped aside here in favor of Ken Kirzinger; in truth, though, Jason requires little aside from heavy-footed stalking and machete-wielding. Nobody else, however, could or should play Freddy except Robert Englund, and he weighs in with his usual gleefully sadistic leering; Englund takes such pleasure in Freddy's antics that he makes the razor-fingered killer almost lovable (he wasn't always, though; look at the original Nightmare again and you may be surprised at how straight -- and ugly -- Englund plays it).

The kids, with the exception of the always-welcome Katharine Isabelle (who brings something fresh and ironic to her tomboyish, chain-smoking character), are more or less psycho fodder. The writers could've had more fun with the formula, which demands that the virginal girl prevail; Monica Keena's Lori is as dull as most of the other heroic virgins in these films. Compare her with the strapping Heather Langenkamp or Adrienne King (from the original Nightmare and Friday, respectively); are young actors not getting enough protein these days? Isabelle is the only performer who shows a future beyond horror, as Johnny Depp and Kevin Bacon showed in their roles in the first Nightmare and Friday. Then again, the movie is called Freddy Vs. Jason, not Scared Kids Trying Not to Go to Sleep.

The whole movie is just preparation for the main event, in which Freddy and Jason square off, first in Jason's dreamworld (where Freddy has the upper hand), then in the real world of Camp Crystal Lake (where Freddy is physically weaker). Director Ronny Yu, whose previous films include the inventive Bride of Chucky and The Bride with White Hair, gives the fans what they paid to see and then some; the horror icons fling each other around, hack and slash without restraint, lop off limbs that regenerate as in a video game. Watching this stuff, I was about as completely satisfied as I've ever been at the movies.

The movie will win no awards and impress few critics who didn't grow up in the '70s and '80s, and some of the expository material is flat-footed and awful, but this is "Freddy Vs. Jason," man. It's a cleverly wrapped gift to me and every horror fan like me, and I feel nothing but affection for it.